Sample Outlines & Treatments

Logline: A burned-out audio engineer accepts a private contract to soundproof a remote estate, only to realize the silence is hiding a child the owners do not want anyone to hear.

ACT ONE
- Mara, 38, an audio engineer with tinnitus, takes a one-week off-the-books contract at a remote estate.
- The owners, Edward and Hessa Vahn, want every room "completely dead" by Friday.
- Mara meets the staff. Everyone speaks softly. No music in the house.

ACT TWO
- On day three, Mara hears a child humming through a wall that is not on her plans.
- She is told the sound is the boiler. Her instruments say it is not.
- She finds a hidden corridor behind the library. Her access card stops working.
- Edward offers her triple the fee to leave a day early. She refuses.
- She records the humming and plays it back through her phone. The child stops.

ACT THREE
- Mara realizes the child is being kept silent — not hidden by accident.
- She uses her own gear to flood the house with the child's recorded humming.
- The staff cannot tell where the sound is coming from. The child walks out.
- Mara drives away with the child as the estate, finally, goes quiet.

Logline: When a teenage neural-network champion discovers her sponsor has been silently editing her wins, she risks her career to expose them on the world stage.

ACT ONE
- Inez Park, 17, is the youngest top-ranked competitor in the Cortex League — a global tournament where players race to design neural networks live on stage.
- Inez was raised by her sponsor, the Vellum Group, since she was nine. She believes she owes them everything.
- Inez's coach, Hiro, is the only person who treats her like a kid instead of a brand. He notices her last winning model has a layer she didn't write.
- Vellum's CEO, Andra Vellum, frames the discovery as an "alignment patch" and warns Hiro not to mention it.

ACT TWO
- Inez wins again. Hiro tells her about the patch. She is furious — at him, not at Vellum.
- A rival, Beni, tells Inez he was disqualified a year earlier for the same reason; Vellum buried it.
- Inez secretly trains a model on her own laptop, using only methods she can prove are hers.
- Vellum schedules her for a televised exhibition match against the previous world champion. The exhibition will be on Vellum-controlled hardware.
- Inez tells Hiro she will use her own model. He tells her she will lose. She agrees that is the point.

ACT THREE
- Live on stage, Inez deliberately runs her own model, narrating her architecture choices to the camera.
- She loses by a wide margin. Vellum's stock briefly drops. Andra publicly congratulates her on "her growth."
- A regulator opens an inquiry. Beni's case is reopened.
- Inez quietly leaves Vellum and enrolls in a small public university with Hiro as her advisor.

Logline: A widowed marine biologist returns to her family's shuttered fish camp and discovers her late husband faked his own drowning to escape a debt that will now come for her instead.

ACT ONE — RETURN
1. EXT. FAMILY FISH CAMP — DAWN
   Want: Selene Boudreaux, 41, wants three quiet weeks to scatter her husband Theo's ashes and decide whether to sell the camp.
   Conflict: The dock is partially burned. Someone has been here recently.
   Turn: She finds Theo's monogrammed lighter on the dock. He smoked, but he never lost that lighter.

2. INT. CAMP KITCHEN — MORNING
   Want: Selene wants to convince herself the lighter is a coincidence.
   Conflict: Her teenage niece Camille shows up uninvited; she is hiding from her own mother and refuses to leave.
   Turn: A man named Ardoin appears at the door, polite, asking for "the rest of what Theo owes."

ACT TWO — DEBT
3. EXT. BAYOU — AFTERNOON
   Want: Selene wants to find out what Theo borrowed and from whom.
   Conflict: Camille demands to be included; Selene refuses; Camille follows anyway.
   Turn: Together they find a half-sunk skiff with Theo's logbook still aboard, dry.

4. INT. NEW ORLEANS BAR — NIGHT
   Want: Selene wants to meet Ardoin's boss — an old family friend, Oren — and clear the debt.
   Conflict: Oren is gentle and insists Theo is alive. He shows her a photograph from three weeks ago.
   Turn: Selene sees, in the photograph background, the burned dock at her camp.

5. INT. CAMP — LATER THAT NIGHT
   Want: Selene wants Theo to come find her so she can confront him.
   Conflict: Camille admits she has been receiving texts from "an unknown family friend" since the funeral.
   Turn: Selene realizes Theo has been watching them both from the camp the entire time.

ACT THREE — CHOICE
6. EXT. CAMP DOCK — DAWN
   Want: Selene wants Theo to look her in the eye.
   Conflict: He arrives. He is sorry. He needs her to give him three more days to "make it right."
   Turn: Selene calls Oren and gives him the location.

7. EXT. BAYOU — DAY
   Want: Selene wants to walk away clean for Camille's sake.
   Conflict: Oren takes Theo. The debt is closed. Camille watches.
   Turn: Selene keeps the camp, repairs the dock herself, and does not scatter the ashes.